ad anything bar tracts lying in bed
eight months, as I've been with the dropsy. I've been whaler man and
boy forty year, and my last ship was the Sea-Horse. Over seven years
ago one of my men picked up something on a beach of one of them islands
east of the Marquesas--we'd put in to water."

"Yes, yes," said Lestrange. "What was it he found?"

"Missus!" roared the captain in a voice that shook the walls of the
room.

The door opened, and the woman appeared.

"Fetch me my keys out of my trousers pocket."

The trousers were hanging up on the back of the door, as if only
waiting to be put on. The woman fetched the keys, and he fumbled over
them and found one. He handed it to her, and pointed to the drawer of a
bureau opposite the bed.

She knew evidently what was wanted, for she opened the drawer and
produced a box, which she handed to him. It was a small cardboard box
tied round with a bit of string. He undid the string, and disclosed a
child's tea service: a teapot, cream jug, six little plates all painted
with a pansy.

It was the box which Emmeline had always been losing--lost again.

Lestrange buried his face in his hands. He knew the things. Emmeline
had shown them to him in a burst of confidence. Out of all that vast
ocean he had searched unavailingly: they had come to him like a
message, and the awe and mystery of it bowed him down and crushed him.

The captain had placed the things on the newspaper spread out by his
side, and he was unrolling the little spoons from their tissue-paper
covering. He counted them as if entering up the tale of some trust, and
placed them on the newspaper.

"When did you find them?" asked Lestrange, speaking with his face still
covered.

"A matter of over seven years ago," replied the captain, "we'd put in
to water at a place south of the line--Palm Tree Island we whalemen
call it, because of the tree at the break of the lagoon. One of my men
brought it aboard, found it in a shanty built of sugarcanes which the
men bust up for devilment."

"Good God!" said Lestrange. "Was there no one there--nothing but this
box?"

"Not a sight or sound, so the men said; just the shanty, abandoned
seemingly. I had no time to land and hunt for castaways, I was after
whales."

"How big is the island?"

"Oh, a fairish middle-sized island--no natives. I've heard tell it's
tabu; why, the Lord only knows--some crank of the Kanakas I s'pose.
Anyhow, there's the findings--you recognise th